head and tail

Sometimes you don't want to print everything in a file. Files can be really big after all.

The head Command

The head command prints the first n lines of a file. The -n flag specifies n as shown:

head -n 10 file1.txt

If you don't specify a number using the -n flag, it will default to 10.

The tail Command

The tail command prints the last n lines of a file. The -n flag specifies n as shown:

tail -n 10 file1.txt

Assignment

Time to start investigating the bank's transactions.

Use the cd command to get into the worldbanc/private/transactions/ directory.
Run the cat command to view the contents of the 2023.csv file. You'll notice that it's a really long file. We don't want to print the whole thing.
Use the head command to print the first 6 lines of the 2023.csv file and copy them into the input field – do not submit yet

We print the first 6 lines because the first line in the file is the header, and we want to include that along with the first 5 transactions.

Use the tail command to print the last 5 lines of the 2023.csv file and copy them into the input field

Submit the combined first 6 and last 5 lines, for a total of 11 lines.

Tips

Remember, you can use .. as an alias for a parent directory. So if you're in worldbanc/private/transactions/ and you want to get to worldbanc, you can run cd .. twice:

cd ..
cd ..

Alternatively, you can just run:

cd ../..

once.

You can run multiple commands on a single line by separating them with a semicolon (;).

command1 ; command2

The second command runs immediately after the first command finishes. If you only want to run the second command if the first succeeds, then you can use &&:

command1 && command2